Five minutes with a young Aussie living the dream with Porsche.

Q&A: Matt Campbell, Le Mans class winner

Five minutes with a young Aussie living the dream with Porsche.

Q&A: Matt Campbell, Le Mans class winner

20 Jun 2018David McCowen

Life is good for Matt Campbell. After winning Australia’s Porsche Carrera Cup Championship in 2016, the Queenslander won a scholarship to compete in Europe, winning races on debut in the elite Porsche Supercup series in 2017.

This year, the 23-year-old earned the opportunity of a lifetime, representing Porsche in events such as the Bathurst 12 Hour and Nurbugring 24 Hour before suiting up for Porsche’s Dempsey-Proton Racing outfit in the World Endurance Championship.

With a Porsche Cayman company car in the garage and a Le Mans class winner’s trophy on the mantelpiece, life could hardly be sweeter for Matt Campbell, who spoke with Drive during a post-race break in Venice.

Congratulations on achieving a brilliant result, winning the GTE-Am class at Le Mans for Dempsey-Proton Racing alongside Christian Ried and Julien Andlauer. Has it settled in yet?

It’s still pretty phenomenal, thinking about it. As soon as you stand on that podium it sunk in pretty quick. It’s something very special at Le Mans – it’s the world’s biggest race, basically, and it’s only my first year there and my second year with Porsche. It’s a big achievement for myself and my career. I’m absolutely stoked how it all went. You wouldn’t normally say ‘it was a perfect race’, but for sure this one, for us, was the absolutely perfect race.

Talk me through it. You did the first stint of the race, that must have been fun?

The starting procedure at Le Mans is so special and unique. I started off with a double stint – we double stinted the whole race, every driver. The first stint wasn’t so nice for us, we lacked a little bit of speed. We weren’t quite happy with the car – the tyre pressures were a little bit too high. But from then on the car was absolutely perfect, the car was right in the window and felt fantastic. It’s a big effort from the team and a lot of hard work with a brand-new car this year.

How does the mid-engine 911 RSR compare to the cars that you’re used to driving in Carrera Cup?

It’s still a Porsche at the end of the day – it certainly has some traits that carry across. It’s just like the evolution of the Cup car, the GT3 R and the RSR – each step has more of everything. This car is more unique – it only has traction control, it doesn’t have ABS, it has a lot more aerodynamics and obviously more power. It’s a big joy to drive.

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What about driving at night, that must have been a real ‘pinch yourself moment’ to go out in the night at Le Mans for the first time?

My second stint was around midnight or so. Prior to that I’d only done one proper night lap. In qualifying I only did limited running so I never actually got the proper experience in the pure darkness as it doesn’t really get dark there until 10.30pm in the evening. So, my first proper laps at night were something very special – it’s quite difficult at night to manage the traffic, being the slowest cars in the field. You’re obviously trying to stay out of trouble, keep it clean and manage it as best as possible which can be quite difficult.

Did you have any close calls with LMP2 or LMP1 cars coming through?

It was really, really good – we only had a couple of close calls, both with LMP2 cars. It was just a few LMP2 cars, and you always knew when they were coming, which colours they were You just had to be so wary of them. For some reason it was always difficult to manage a couple of cars – we had a more minor touch in one of my stints and another time we had to go off-track a little bit to avoid contact because they squeezed you under brakes a little bit, which is not ideal. Other than that, in a 24 Hour race and especially being Le Mans with the diversity of cars and drivers, I think that’s a pretty solid effort.

What was it like seeing the car cross the line at the end? It must have been such a relief.

To be leading the race from 5.30pm in the afternoon on the Saturday through to the end of the race, we always managed a gap of a minimum of 30 seconds to two and a half to three minutes at times, it was quite unreal. Being a 24 hour race, even in the last hour I wasn’t getting too excited or anything like that. I jumped out with around 40 minutes to go and Christian brought it home with the driver time limit. Even with 10 minutes to go it was getting a little bit real. Still, anything happens in these races – Toyota showed that a couple of years ago, with three minutes to go it all went wrong for them.

So Christian getting in at the last stint wasn’t a case of ‘he’s the car owner, he wants to get in and take the flag’?

No. We had certain driver times and things like that. We had a plan going into the race for what we would do, we were always double stinting and it was always planned for Christian to do a short stint at the end. We did change that a little bit at night just with how the safety cars worked out and everything like that. The race went perfectly to plan – we had a lead of two and a half minutes or so to the second-placed car and Christian just had to cruise home, which he did. With my double stint at the end before handing over to Christian, we had a comfortable lead just cruising around. It got to the point in the race where we said ‘we just cruise now – no risk. From the start of the race until 11 or 12 o’clock on Sunday we were pretty much flat-out, then we had to cruise and manage the car. Just stay out of trouble.

When you talk about holding a gap to the second-placed car, it’s a Ferrari driven by ex-Formula One driver Giancarlo Fisichella. Did you look at that and pinch yourself at all, or is it just another race, just another driver, in a way where you just needed to get in and do your job?

Yeah, I think it’s very much a case of ‘another race, another driver’. You look at the calibre of drivers in the whole field and you think about some of the guys in the championship now, whether it be LMP1, LMP2 or GTE-Pro, it’s pretty unbelievable to be on that grid, and especially with Le Mans being so special and even more cars than a normal championship round on the WEC calendar. It’s pretty cool – it’s an awesome feeling but there’s definitely no love lost between any of the guys, no matter what they’ve done, that’s for sure.

When did you know that you would have this drive? When did you find out that you would get a chance at Le Mans?

That was probably November last year, I think. We had our end of season review with Porsche. I found out I was moving on from being a Porsche junior to a Porsche young professional role – obviously we were already discussing calendars and series for the next year. It was pretty much a done deal – it was very early on that I knew, but we had to sort some things out for the big season, the 2018-2019 super season.

Did you ever think you would be at Le Mans on the same grid as Fernando Alonso, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jenson Button or Andre Lotterer – all these drivers that have legendary experience?

This year was my first year in GTE-Am, which was a great opportunity, but in the same sense I never thought it would ever happen early in my career. It’s only my second year driving in Europe and my second year driving for Porsche, it’s a huge honour and obviously Le Mans is a big part of Porsche’s history.

Being part of that history is a pretty surreal feeling – I really want to stay in Europe and cement myself and have a long career over here. That’s always been my aim and my goal. Now to have this behind me on the resume is pretty cool.

What’s next on the calendar, the Silverstone 6 Hour I suppose? Are you doing races other than the World Endurance Championship this year?

Basically, all that is left for me is the WEC season, I’ve already done the Dubai 24 Hour, Bathurst 12 Hour and Nurburgring 24 Hour, plus a couple of VLN races [at the Nurburgring]. At the moment it’s just a couple of WEC races and a couple of endurance races in the GT3 R that are yet to be confirmed. Silverstone is up next in the middle of August, we are going into it now with the championship lead as well, which is a nice little bonus to have.

I saw on Instagram that Patrick Dempsey gave you a beautiful watch before the race.

We have a fantastic sponsor with Tag Heuer on the car, which is heavily involved with Patrick as an ambassador. Before the race all us drivers were able to get our hands on a watch – it was very special. There’s a lot of focus on Pat, he’s been such a big part of Tag Heuer, and there were so many representatives from Tag there as well.

What’s it like working with someone like Patrick?

He’s got a big personality and everyone knows him. It was really great to have him there – he loves it, and it was so cool to see. He’s so heavily involved, he loves getting right in behind the scenes, and he didn’t leave the garage for the whole race, he was in there watching for the whole 24 hours, which I think is just fantastic.

He’s got the experience – he came second in the race a few years ago, and he’s done a lot of racing in his career. He has that driver point of view as well, which I think is always handy for his role within the team.

We had a really good chat at Bathurst about how people very close to you dug deep to make your career happen. It must be so rewarding to be able to repay that sort of faith they’ve put in you with this massive result.

Yeah, very much so. It’s still early days in my career in Europe with Porsche. We've only just started, we really need to cement ourselves here now. To get a result like this on my first attempt at the biggest race in the world – it was always something that was on the cards, and something that we wanted to achieve.

Now we’ve done that so early in my career, it’s quite phenomenal. We were hoping that I would get the opportunity to go to Le Mans with Porsche. Now we’ve been able to tick that box so early, it’s pretty unbelievable when you think about it, that’s for sure.